A Feminist Literary Collective (& outlaw poets swearing)

Pandora – Kristiana Reed

I am Pandora’s jar; unbreakable at first glance but I glimmer in the sun in a way which invites people in. My lid is screwed tightly shut. Many hands still come and search for a way in, for a doorway into the hallways of my person. Only two have ever been successful; confronting me with curiosity I couldn’t refuse. Their hands traced my edges, my bottleneck curves and their lips caressed sealed pathways to my dark madness; hearing the frantic buzz of tied up wings. All at once I poured my heart from the lip of the jar. I released glass cracking sobs of misery to plague their ears – the whole of humanity in the bed we shared. I became soft, malleable to their touch. In love as the locust swarm of heartache and hurt breathed free from my body, frantic wings lifted upon air.

I am Pandora’s jar and in me Hope remained. She lived in the house you both built inside my chest. The walls were thin so she listened to the palpitations of an anxious heart; stripped bare of the anger which kept it warm. Once I harboured my past and my insecurities and I believed I knew pain. But Hope, she rattled her cage and bruised my ribs. The bricks of her house fell apart at the touch of a promise and littered my air ways with dust. This was heartbreak. I was no longer counting nefarious winged miseries but how many times I wished I could make this right, how many times I wished to close the growing distance between us, how many times I brushed my hair in the off chance you’d come, how many times I ran to the window believing the footsteps below, were yours. Hopelessly in love is not a phrase I know.

I am Pandora’s jar after it has been opened; the salty taste of hope on my lips.

Painting by Lawrence Alma-Tandema (1881)

_____________________________

Kristiana Reed juggles writing and teaching English; in both vocations she endeavours to remind people of their self worth and how dazzlingly beautiful the world can be.